


Night Strangers

by azurestained



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Mortal, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, will is a pretentious literary nerd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24283945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurestained/pseuds/azurestained
Summary: As Nico di Angelo tells the stranger more tales, he drowns himself into the abyss of no-return. (Or, in other fates, the constellations had tied and Will Solace is just a mere stranger at his doorstep.)
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32





	Night Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: Mentions of character death, suicide, and mental illness. Please proceed with caution.

**I.**

It wasn’t until the cruel, slow chirps of downtown morning radio came in blues, violets, and obnoxious splashes of grey melancholia, storming in affluent and a little bit hesitant. Nico di Angelo hears of the news today: the fire of at least thirty miles away had extinguished and calmed down, leaving a population of two hundred-and-three homeless on the wretched streets of his city. _Tragedy,_ the taste on his tongue would have liked to say.

He watched as the smoke dissipating from his coffee slowed, evaporating into the void of chilly November air, stacks of belligerent papers screaming angry blotches of stygian black ink waiting on his work desk—his college essay was due Friday, and he could already care less about the scornful visage of his father’s face, disappointed. Regretful. Shamed and shunned. Nico di Angelo knew he wouldn’t pass this term. _Wrong child._ A voice whispering, gothic mansions and dead, dead, grimy garden lawns; he remembers them all.

Flipping a few pages of the other paper stack on the dusty mahogany of his work space, he finds solace in the atrocity of it all—his professionally arranged dorm room, the pristine white on the once run-down surfaces of his walls, the trust fund from a man sharing his last name, and his horrible subway picture laid bare on his ten-year VISA. He finds solace at how the shell of his father’s wealth never seemed to control him. The manipulative, demanding growl of societal norms and conformities sliding past above his head, flying into the vast unknown of what Nico di Angelo never wanted to be.

He never liked being in the center of this whirlwind, soul-belching avalanche.

The boy sighed and slammed the last proofread page of his essay. The gradual annoyance of his professor’s bigotry seeping deep into his brain, and, ironically enough, he is now passing an essay for his class; he entitled it _The Minorities and Their Walk Against Prejudice._

Irony tasted like bile in his throat.

At the corner of his eye sat the calendar, dead and deceiving. It told him he needed to go to his next doctor’s appointment, another therapy session. He didn’t want to go. He had no reason to.

**II.**

Walking past the flickering streetlights, down onto the sketchy howls of the pitch black alley leading to his dorm, Nico di Angelo feels the first flicks of winter season sliding through the thin crevices of his cross-stitch sweater. He avoids six—no, eight—maybe ten drunken gazes up the alleyway, their eyes stank of what he deemed was of cold judgment.

He carries on, listens to the glowering sound of the elevator doors opening, a familiar, yet very unsettling emotion sitting in the middle of his system. Nico _remembers,_ yet again. He remembers 2004. He remembers the domineering face of laughter of kids his age, chanting slurs of what he was made of. Nico di Angelo clears of the dehumanization; of the painful, painful memories of beyond before; he closes in on the sucker punch to his gut and fights the overbearing feeling of deathly pale threatening at his eyes.

Nico di Angelo notices a man right next to him.

There was no exchange. Just the toxicity of oxygen in the tight elevator space: a very loud crunch of silence.

Six feet. Heavy beds of de-saturated gloom under tired, pale blue. His hair looked like it had seen a whirlwind, somehow complementing the disturbed ruffle of his unorthodox orange button-up. The man looks at him, weary, as if he had witnessed a funeral unfolding live, but it didn’t seem to match the sad snarls of the drunken college sophomores near the alley down below.

Nico wanted to say something. An abrupt _ding_ of the elevator gave him whiplash, because he never noticed he was staring too long. When he stepped out of the traveling box, he becomes amused as the stranger steps out with him. “Here,” the stranger hummed, almost a whisper, handing over a takeout. The brown paper bag felt hot in Nico’s palms; he realized it might have been bought out new. An awkward palm welcomed his back, and the lopsided staccato of the stranger’s grin made its way onto his face. “Hangovers can be a huge pain in the ass.”

The stranger walked opposite of him.

Nico took out hangover soup from the bag. Nico was not drunk.

**III.**

When the chilly soles of his feet touched the outside balcony of his dorm room, he sees the galaxy vomit a thousand freckles at a nearby constellation, the remnants show a brilliant paint of ichor jewels. He feels his element in the night sky, the mere solitude of utter silence embracing him. Every night, Nico di Angelo talked to the stars.

“It should have been me,” he whispered, looking up at the endless abyss. He asked the sky, “Do you agree that it should have been me? Should I have been the one falling down that building?”

“Hey, lunatic, don’t die.” He heard someone mutter in this rhapsodic, slurry sentence. Nico di Angelo finds another presence at a near distance. The man in the elevator is hunched over his own terrace barricade, grin decorating the mischief of his flushed cheeks; drunken, drunken misery.

“Drinking too much messes up with ‘ya.” He slurred. “So don’t die.”

“I’m not the drunk one here…” Nico muttered.

The stranger frowned. “You’re not drunk, bud? Damn, give me back my soup.”

Nico stared, incredulous. The next moment fell quiet. The cricket noises fueled zen and serenity—peace and dawn winds. He inhales the peace of the night, the shatters of his broken pieces mending at the slowest crescendo of his loneliest nightmares; caging him in, loosening him free. The stranger started humming, maybe not as melodic as he wanted it to be, but Nico di Angelo heard of 2004, then the last summer of high school from years ago. Nico listens to the hidden passages of solitary melancholy on the stranger’s lips, the etches of worry on his eyebrows, and the bouts of confinement on the pale moonlight of his eyes.

“Do you like the stars?” The stranger started, a low sound coming from the edges of his mouth.

“Yes,” Nico replied, breathless. “I tell them a lot. I tell them everything.” He suddenly feels very light-headed, almost as if the drunkenness was contagious, almost as if he wasn’t drowning along the midnight essence. “You? Do you like them?”

The stranger nodded. “I like the stars, but I like the sun more. The sun reminds me of dad, you know, the fancy stuff.” He leaned on the rails, a few more edges and he’d dangle off the building barricades.

“I hate the sun,” Nico muttered. “It’s too happy.”

“Do you not like happiness, dear stranger? Would you rather swim with the shadows sojourning you to a denouement of reckless wreck? Do you like feeding lies to the lions? What’s the argument of a burning reality to that of a peaceful, mute mantra? What did the sun do to you?” Nico could not understand him. He could not decipher the drunken lisp of those words.

So Nico replied, “The sun is a deceitful liar. The night is young and endless. Even when it’s light outside, it rains, it gets dark. It creates the illusion of a happy field, when in reality, it’s a façade of unrepairable delusions. The sun is temporary, it gets shrouded over with heavy, high-strung, egoist clouds.” The conviction in his words revealed more than he intended. Nico continued, “When it rains in the night,” his voice simmers down to a whisper. “The world is just the same. Even when it’s dark, you know it will always be dark. You won’t be living in false hope.”

The stranger was staring at him, a sad glint on his eyes. He sighed, “I have nothing against that. But talking to the stars might be too lonely, you know. You might need someone who can respond.”

“Your point is…?” Nico trailed off.

“I’m here.” The stranger grinned, almost paradoxically too happy for the mood they were going for.

“You are a stranger.” The stranger nodded, “Yup.” Nico shook his head. “Who is also very drunk.” The stranger nodded again, an intoxicated giggle flickering in his throat, “Yup.”

Sighing, Nico stepped back from the rails and started to walk back into his bedroom door. “Hey,” he called out.

The stranger looked like he was about to doze off, the ruffle of his hair escaping to an array of blond halo. The grin folded into a thin line—nothing to reveal, nothing to put into narrative. He looked up at Nico, a passive nonchalance plastered onto his face. Nico looks at his feet, suddenly feeling very shy. “Thanks.” He whispered.

The man in front of him smiled. A genuine, soft lull silencing his all-too rough edges. The man gestures to him, a small wave complementing his kind eyes.

When he felt that it was almost dawn and the door to his outside porch had closed, Nico had wished to dream of stars, of his father’s approval, and of the rising sun that seemed to fit the dispersing aura of his next-door neighbor. When the novels started to turn and his universe disappeared one by one, Nico di Angelo slept with a clear vision of pale blue eyes.

When future Nico asks, don’t tell him he had a serious, philosophical conversation with an estranged drunk.

**IV.**

He sees the stranger the following night. He got there earlier than him. The stranger sat on a kitchen chair, limbs unbearably still too long, dragging along pristine slabs of rock. The terrace felt especially strange today. The stranger was no longer drunk. His gaze was far away, as if looking into a time portal that seemed awfully familiar. Awfully invasive.

The shuffling of Nico’s shoes grated against the smoothness of his floor tiles, rousing the stranger from his personal solace. “Hello.” The stranger’s smile was tired. The grey under his eyes spoke of college finals.

“Sorry for—you know—yesterday.” Nico said.

Raising his eyebrows, the man replied, “You don’t need to apologize. If someone had to, it should be me. I’m sorry, I sounded too pretentious. Alcohol is a very, very daunting man.” He breathed a laugh. “May I introduce myself?”

“No,” Nico replied.

The stranger paused. “Oh.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, this seems convenient. Are we playing a stranger’s game?”

Nico nodded, “If that’s what you want to call it.” The stranger shrugged, “Stranger’s game, huh.” The man articulated again.

"Stranger, like my father.” Nico spat humorlessly.

The man across stared at him. “Nice satire there, dude. Love me some self-deprecation at 9:30 P.M.” Nico di Angelo shrugged, _nothing too strange for a stranger._ “Care to share life to a very sketchy, unknown neighbor?”

“Dad wants me dead.” He started. The stranger fidgeted, as if saying, _whoa slow down with the details,_ it’s not something you hear every day. “When my sister took her own life not too long ago, dad thought the wrong child died. She was stellar, you know. She was not her arduous, cryptic brother.”

The stranger nodded, the spirit of familiarity surrounding their conversation. Then he looked at him as if saying, _go on._

Nico swallows, the air suddenly becoming thin. “Well, my point is, my father is nothing short of my business partner. He only calls me by my full name, we meet at dinner once a month, I get paid allowance like it’s monthly salary.” He tries to smile; it was too grim. “I knew how my sister felt, I knew how the suffocation pressured her to run to the edge. The cliff is right about anywhere. It can be at your house, maybe at the alley down below, maybe it’s at your next Christmas…” He trailed off.

“Your sister was forced to a life of perfection. An all-time low of mismatched occurrences and untied feelings, yes. The wavering expectations of your father almost came to a halt, _almost,_ until he realized he only lost what’s most valuable. No offense, but your dad is a gosh-darn, golly-geebus ignoramus eff-wad.”

As the corners of Nico’s lips started to turn, he realizes that the soberness of his neighbor might be even better than his drunken form.

“Are you a literature student?”

The stranger seemed amused. “Is it the pretentiousness? No. I’m in pre-med. Public health. I just happened to read too much _J.R.R Tolkien._ And eccentric detective novels. _”_ Then he turned to him. “You?”

Nico shook his head. “Literature.”

The man looked at him in disbelief. “Then why did you ask me if I was Lit?”

“You’re not lit, you are a very lame man.”

“Very funny.”

“Nice oxymorons, though.” Nico said after he finished laughing.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Did you call me a moron?”

Nico laughed even louder.

**V.**

Tonight, they swam underneath indigo lights.

Nico di Angelo sees the stranger on his usual balcony, gaze far once again, as if he had been yearning for years. He notices the moonlight contrasting against the pale blue of his neighbor’s eyes, engulfing his face in a cold glow. At that moment, he looked strikingly handsome, Nico couldn’t bear to look away.

“Self-diagnosis is a terrifying thing.” The stranger agreed. “The youth is roped into this weird Amazon of wanting to belong, even if it meant falsifying their testimonies of mental illness.”

That night, the rain had just stopped pouring.

“There are kids like me that are, you know,” Nico di Angelo started. “There are kids who are clinically diagnosed, it’s very peculiar that you hear some college cheerleader that she’s depressed because her Instagram boyfriend stopped replying to her.”

The stranger grinned at this, leaning back and showing a more comfortable stance.

“It was in 2012. When the people started to believe the world was ending, I was facing a psychiatrist telling me I was diagnosed with SAD. So I told him, _damn right I’m sad,_ but he had this scary look on his face and traced his words back. _No, no, no. S-A-D._ _He was spelling it out. Seasonal Affective Disorder.”_

“Did you have someone to talk to? How’d your dad react?” The stranger looked at him directly; Nico felt like he was back at his counselling session again. The man’s expression shatters, then suddenly traces his words back. “Sorry, was that okay to ask?”

Nico shrugged. “I’m not sure the high school counselor was someone I’d call a friend. Dad insisted I had to grow out of my—quote, unquote—delusions. My mental illness was treated like a My Chemical Romance emo phase.”

He hears the stranger snorting, as he pauses and covers his mouth. “That was a bad time to laugh, wasn’t it?”

Nico di Angelo shook his head, glad his satire had made blue eyes shine that night.

**VI.**

The next time he saw him was at the doctor’s clinic. It was a seven-minute walk from his dorm, a cascade of grey, monochrome hues coloring the daylight. Nico did not bring an umbrella with him, so when he arrived five minutes into the doorstep, he was drenching in the wrath of furious clouds.

When he opens the door, a man curses behind the run-down wood; and as Nico di Angelo looked, his neighbor was doubling over, clutching his nose. Nico felt like he had to be apologetic, but then he teased, “Sorry, did I ruin your nose job?”

The man snarled at him, laughter in his words, “The horrible denotation of your words makes me want to curse you an eager demise.”

Nico flashed a sinister grin. “I do not have the fortune of understanding what you mean, Shakespeare, but will you please accept my apology and tell me why you are at this very fine location?”

The stranger paused, smile fading out. He kept his mouth at a straight line, opening and closing, then replying, “Dad. He’s in there.”

Nico seemed to realize. “Oh.” He paused for a moment. “Is he… is he here for counseling?”

The man nodded. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Car crash three months ago. I just…” He sighs, sounding utterly defeated. “I just want my dad back.”

They sat at the chairs outside. Nico finds himself listening to the stranger, to the unspoken hesitation clinging at his sentences; to the hidden sadness begging to be unearthed from the slow hums of his breathing.

“I was drunk, I know. I was intoxicated way out of my mind, but my heart was sober. Very, very sober. I remember telling you how the sun reminded me of my dad. He’s every boy’s Captain America, he’s every teenager’s Guns n’ Roses Slash. He is… he _was…”_ He closed his eyes. “He was the father every boy would have loved to have. And I had him. I had him before I even knew who Slash was, I had him before I watched Marvel.”

The stranger finally looked at him, red at his eyes, nose, lips. Nico watched as the man in front of him unravels in broken disdain, his hands trembling. “I don’t have Captain America now.” He smiled sadly. “He doesn’t recognize me anymore.”

When the stranger looks up and sees a figure standing by the clinic aisles, he stands and mutters a quick apology before aiding the old man who looked completely out of himself. The stranger didn’t look back.

He didn't ask why Nico was at a clinic.

**VII.**

Nico di Angelo was realizing a lot of things. He is realizing how much the night didn’t feel the same as before. He is realizing how empty the stars stared back at him—inhumane, immaterial… _invaluable._ He is realizing how much he got used to human company. He is realizing it had been three days since he last saw his neighbor, two weeks since he saw a familiar grin.

Nico di Angelo realized his old friend is coming back. He once named it _loss._

So when his thoughts drifted away to empty clouds looming over the freckled canvass of pitch black, he suddenly misses hearing the voice that spoke up from a distance away. “Noble ambition, being a doctor that is.” The stranger started, low volume filling Nico’s ears.

He jumps back, surprised. His neighbor is sitting at his balcony, his fingers circling around a beer can, still unopened, and the shadows under his eyes made him look deathly pale.

“It’s becoming a teenage cliché, _hey, you need to be a doctor so you can say you want to help people and impress people on your college application,_ really, how absolutely strange. It’s true. My mom’s a small-time poet, our bill’s getting paid from the double-job I get downtown. When I was filling my college application, I had one look at my father and realized I was filling it in for two absolute reasons: _one,_ I needed money, and _two,_ I don’t need more dads becoming like my dad.” He didn’t look at Nico, only continued to stare at the sky—a nihilist, satirical irony mocking Nico at his face, as if he was looking at a reflection of himself.

The stranger’s gaze was very far, far away. Nico could not reach him.

“You were right. I was terrified that you were right. Maybe I liked the sun because I believed in make-believe endings. Maybe I wanted to hope in false hope. Maybe I was hauntingly afraid of what the truth brings. I wrapped myself in the delusion that my father still knew me. I look at their wedding portrait at our family home’s top shelf, believing he still remembered how he used to be my mother’s first love. That he used to sing me to sleep. That his voice used to sound more amazing to me than his old jazz tapes. I accepted it all like how clouds covered the sunlight. Even if it rained, I can take cover at the nearest shelter.” When tears touched his lips, he looked at Nico di Angelo.

It was his first time witnessing the complete absence on his face. Nico’s throat felt like sandpaper.

“Sorry,” He whispered. Nico shook his head.

“Come with me?” Nico offered, gesturing to his bedroom door.

The man took one last look at moonlight, stepped far from his porch, and let darkness consume him once again. When Nico di Angelo heard a knock at his door, he caught sight of six feet tall until he was enveloped into his warmth.

**VIII.**

Nico di Angelo sat on his bed. His neighbor was on the floor, seeming to be in silent agreement of solitary peace. Nico looked at him, hesitating. The man received the signal and nodded.

“Nearing the winter of 2004, I told my family that I wasn’t interested in girls. They told me, _you’re too young, of course you’re not._ I was in elementary—I was _very_ insistent, I told them, _no, I don’t_ like _girls._ I’ve been thinking, but I’m guessing that’s when I stopped being my father’s son. I didn’t lose him when we lost my sister. It was ancient story.” Nico didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he entwined them, kept them tucked at his propped up knees.

“Then just a few years back,” the words felt alien, as if they were preserved at the back of his mind, supposedly hidden—supposedly forgotten. “Word got out. High school was a train-wreck. You get friends, get drunk, then suddenly you’re a lost chess piece in a maze raid of telltale liberal America. You get the novel cliché, my locker gets vandalized with… insults,” he almost stops, then wills himself to continue. “No one talked to me, my high school was the same one as my elementary, so the bigot school counselor I once had approached me again for—you know—conversion therapy. I was the bubonic plague, the Ragnarok—everyone avoided me, afraid my time-bomb would saturate and explode.”

“Bigotry comes as Janus. Two-faced. No proper standing, all ad hominem.” The man told him in hushed consolation, his feelings raw and alive, coming forth as an overwhelmed hurricane. Peculiar calm. It was nearing 2A.M.

“Have I ever told you I find your brain absolutely sexy?” Nico breathes out.

The stranger laughs, his smile finally reaching his eyes. “I like to believe I’m _eloquent,_ even through these trying times, but thank you.”

His neighbor falls into silence again, and the night wraps around them like haze. “Can I hug you again?” His words tilted into hesitance, voice falling to a whisper. Nico could hear his pulse gyrating out of control; so he nods, arms welcome, as the stranger embraces him tight, knocking the wind out of him.

He hugs as warmly as his smile, Nico thinks. The stranger arches down to tuck his face into Nico’s neck, inhaling.

When he finally looks at him, his eyes focus into Nico’s, hands still warm at his waist. Time seemed to stop at Nico di Angelo’s expense, and suddenly he’s just free-falling to a void of pale blue. The stranger moves closer, _closer,_ then his lips melded into his.

Nico smiles into the kiss, finding the situation a funny turn of events. Just an hour ago, he was desolate, finding the balcony next door empty, devoid of his neighbor’s familiar grin. Then he sees him, disheveled and lonely as he had felt, pouring his heart out like he hadn’t just disappeared for a couple weeks.

Now he’s sat at Nico’s bed, kissing him, making him feel all the love he had been deprived of all his years.

When they separated, Nico chases his lips one more time, pecking him softly. “Your lips are red,” he noted.

“I know,” the stranger smiles, “You did that to me.”

“And so is your nose, and your _eyes_ —were you crying while kissing me?”

“You better not hold that out against me,” he warns, smiling sheepishly.

Nico then stretches out a hand; the man in front of him looked confused. Nico raises his eyebrows, willing his hand further. “Hello,” he started. “I am Nico di Angelo.”

The stranger grinned, “I guess we’re doing this backwards?”

He took a breath, and accepted the hand in front him. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m your neighbor next door. I moved in about two months ago. I always see you at your balcony, but you only looked at me a month ago. I’m offended that the stars are more noticeable than I am. Your eyes are very pretty. My name is Will Solace.”

The moon had never looked more beautiful.

**IX.**

The balcony next door was empty.

Above him, crystals started to dissipate into fractal hues of golds and silvers; the last drops of adjacent galaxies swirling into unknown belief, Nico di Angelo feels a chill as the Polaris smiles at him a few thousand miles away. When he feels lips close in on the small of his head, he leans back to warmth. To longing. To love.

Nico di Angelo _remembers._ Once upon a time, he asked the stars.

“Should it have been me?” Lullaby. Orion’s belt sang a little softer.

When Will Solace wraps his arms around him, Nico di Angelo lets go of 2004, even for a little bit. That night, he dreams of a full moon, and thinks why the world never ends at a solar eclipse.

The radio hummed later at dawn, two hundred-and-three shelters got appointed by the city state, the only fires burning were the stovetops boiling tea that afternoon. _Tragedy,_ Nico di Angelo frowned at the aftertaste. As he recalls his countless voyages through his jolly-rogers in the night sky, he finds home in the stranger next door. _Melodrama,_ the literature boy wrote, his college finals marked Friday.

**Author's Note:**

> re-publishing and editing this work i wrote back in january! pjo tv series getting announced makes me as happy as the solangelo ficdom coming back to life. hoped you like this 4k worth of word vomit, i love my sons and i'm so excited to see nico on screen.
> 
> i initially thought of this fic as a 'omg they were roommates' trope, but decided i wanted them to aesthetically look at the stars in their separate balconies instead. i liked the idea of them being each other's comfort, but without any actual strings attached. but it's solangelo, they get emotionally invested.
> 
> feedback is always appreciated! <3


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